Will Wood is an American singer-songwriter, multi-media artist, and alternative comic known for his ever-changing style and difficult-to-decipher public persona. Wood has released numerous singles and three studio albums: Everything Is A Lot, in 2015; Self-Ish (stylized as SELF-iSH), in 2016, The Normal Album in 2020, and the forthcoming In Case I Make It, (stylized as “In Case I Make It,”) to be released on July 29th, 2022. Little is known about the actual Will Wood, having often been the subject of strange myths, misinformation, and misconceptions. Despite having achieved viral success at the height of the pandemic, Wood has expressed a disdain both personal and ideological for social media, and does not shy away from making these views public. Unlike many artists in this era, Wood makes the fact that he doesn’t operate any social media accounts clear, openly resisting the way artists are expected to self-promote. Despite his reputation as a private and almost reclusive man, Wood has consistently been open about his past struggles with addiction and his life as a sufferer of mental illness, having entered recovery early in his career and later being diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Wood donates portions of his income to various mental health charities, including the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, saying, “I’ve gotten a lot better. I want to try and do something to help others get there.”
About the upcoming “In Case I Make it,” Wood has said:
“In Case I Make it,” is a reversal of my original, more fitting title, In Case I Die, which I think having mentioned has people thinking that this record is my “I feel better now” album. Which is a nice story, of course, but ultimately is just a story. Maybe I just wanted to tell a nice story, or live in one. The music itself shows how inaccurate the new title is, and over the course of the record sort of shows why it needed the quotes and comma I’ve since added. “In case I make it,” is a fragment; an incomplete thought spoken too soon. It’s what “Will Wood” accidentally called his new album. It’s almost sort of as if it’s a concept album about making an album called In Case I Make It. Taking a step back, I think the album ultimately is about hope and hopelessness, real and imagined. It’s about poison traps and cheese on the moon. It’s about trying to survive yourself so you can better yourself. It’s deeply personal and embarrassingly transparent, but obtusely self-referential and obnoxiously self-indulgent. It’s 73 minutes of a boring little nobody spilling his guts, and then looking at them and going “oh, gross, do you see that?” and trying to laugh at himself. It’s my favorite one I’ve done. The real story is that I feel like a totally different person than I was even just a year or two ago, and this new person needs to express himself in ways the old one couldn’t. And then he needs a break.